I hope to use this new thread as a location to provide periodic updates on the IFD540 product and specifically on it's progress toward FAA certification.

I'd like to ask that any product specific questions on features and the like are asked in other pre-existing or newly-formed threads and we keep this particular thread focused on the cert progress.

In this thread, I'll cover hardware and software progress as well as flight test and lab test milestones reached enroute to TSO and STC approvals. To the extent that it makes sense, I'll post target dates and readers can use this thread to independently assess progress towards certification.

At this point, we have 12 IFD540 units under test that are used in our four test aircraft, three integration test labs (ITL), and in the environmental test lab that we're renting time in. I personally fly the units 3-5 times per week and use them in an ITL every day. This is going to be a great product when we can get it in your airplane.

Steve, I appreciate your effort in being as transparent as possible
without exposing too much information to your competition.I think all of us who have invested in this development
would like to share in the excitement.Is
your plan to get the hardware qualified first, so you can gear up the factory to
make those initial deliveries to people like me with the software qualification
to follow?Or will both the hardware and
software be certified as a unit?

It's a little of both. By that I mean there is no notion of FAA certification for a hardware unit without accompanying software for a product like this.

Hardware qual has two principal elements to it. If the hardware contains what are called "Programmable Logic Devices" (ours does) or other similar types of equipment, then there is a standard that we must show compliance with (DO-254). That is a rough analog to the software standard (called DO-178). The second part of hardware qual is the environmental qualification. Environmental qual is governed by a standard called DO-160. DO-160 will drive us to various vibration, heat, cold, altitude, humidity, RF emissions and susceptibility, etc types of tests. We are running both the DO-254 and DO-160 hardware qual efforts in parallel. The environmental one is typically several months long (lots of tests, some with long durations) and the outcome of each is that we produce two Hardware Qual Reports that are submitted to the FAA as part of the overall compliance data package. We'll turn those reports in before the final software and flight test reports and while the FAA will likely review and comment on them, they won't likely "sign off" on them without the accompanying software reports.

I'm also not sure how well understood the overall cert process is but we talk of it in terms of "TSO" and "STC" efforts. Each of the TSO and STC cert efforts have elements of hardware and software data to them but the easiest way to think of that is:

TSO - take this to mean the equipment has been shown to meet various instrument technical standards (e.g. Moving map, traffic display, lightning sensor, FMS, etc). In the case of TSO, we have demonstrated compliance to the three hardware and software standards too (DO-254, DO-160, DO-178).

STC - this is the approval for installation in an airplane. You can have TSO for a product but if you don't have STC, you have no approved basis to install that gear in an airplane.

I expect to report on all of those milestones in this thread (254, 160 and 178 tasks, TSO, STC and flight test milestones, etc).

So that was a long-winded way of saying that for all practical purposes, both the hardware and software get certified as a unit. But, that doesn't mean we won't be building up a bunch of units in the factory. We'll be sufficiently through the hardware qual far enough ahead of the software qual that even though we'll technically build up the units at risk, the risk of having to disassemble and redo some hardware element will be very low. That way, we have a slew of built up units awaiting the final TSO and STC approval such that the day after we have those certs, we can be shipping units.

We've made very significant progress in the last few months but we have a few more months of work ahead of us. Here are a few updates on our status:

We have about 12 units built up that are being used for various purposes to include flight test and software development and hardware environmental qualification;

We are flying the units in multiple aircraft. I know I'm personally logging about 30 hours per month in-flight with the IFD540 and I'm just one of a few test pilots. Most of our flying is based out of our Lincoln MA location and our Melbourne FL location;

There are 174 external, 3rd party devices the IFD540 must integrate with. We're complete with about 115 of those devices, partially complete with another 35 or so and haven't started on the rest but we believe most to either be simple or rare in the field;

We are extremely happy to have retired two of my top two technical risks - we are pulling about 20% less current than we had estimated based on our design (this was one of the two risks) which means we are generating a proportionally smaller amount of wattage, which in turn means our unit is meaningfully cooler in temperature than we had anticipated (this was the other risk). In fact, at maximum wattage (e.g. max map depiction, VHF transmitting much longer than typical, etc) still means our unit is the same as ambient temperature. This is huge and much cooler than all surrounding units and much cooler than the G-530s that it may be replacing;

We begin official, for-credit environmental testing on Dec 15th. This is the last meaningful task left on the hardware side of the product. We have conducted in-house risk mitigation dry runs of all that testing and passed with flying colors;

A key member of our flight test/development team just received his DER ticket from the FAA and they (the FAA) are delegating more approval authority to Avidyne - this should help with end-game schedule control;

In addition to the actual software creation/functionality, FAA "certification" includes showing compliance with the DO-178B software development standard. This has "gobs" of effort associated with it that only a true software engineer can appreciate (and in some "sick" cases, actually enjoy). This is where the majority of the remaining work and schedule impact reside. In other words, once we go "code complete", we still have man-weeks of process compliance/artifacts work to complete;

The crew is working in a full-court press manner and we're completely heads down trying to finish the product. We understand it is in our extreme best interest to get this done and shipping as soon as feasible. This is an all-consuming effort so any apparent radio silence on our part is due solely to that intense focus. I wouldn't read any more into it than that but please don't hesitate to use this forum to press for updates if you think you need to hear more.

When future releases with new features are certified, what is the upgrade process? Will we have to take the plane to a dealer or can we install the update? Will any (flight) testing be required? Will there be any associated costs to upgrade?

The upgrade process should be a breeze. Every bit of software in the IFD540s are field loadable via the USB port on the front of the bezel/unit. That means the software can be uploaded using a USB thumb drive. We do it all the time during development and the whole process takes about 5 minutes.

This next part is not a done yet but, it is trending very nicely. The FAA has just issued updated guidance about what types of actions the individual owner can perform on their aircraft and it appears that software updates, if using an approved Avidyne-supplied service bulletin, may (and I stress the word "may" right now) be permitted. We are seeking clarification on that one but if that's true, that would even save the time/effort of you having to fly to an approved dealer to have that work done. If, this new FAA-allowed owner update effort is not permitted for software updates, then it is still a simple process but involves your dealing loading, and signing off the software in accordance with the service bulletin.

The need for flight testing before update signoff will depend on the nature of the update or functionality added. The vast majority of the envisioned updates would not require a flight to sign off.

As for cost to upgrade, that too will depend on the nature of the new content. Generally speaking, a bug fix load is no cost but a feature add load may have some cost associated with it.

Tomorrow
is the first day of the second month of 2013; I thought this would be a good
time for all of us to get a heading check. Steve would you please provide us
status where we standin the
certification process? Did we get all of our flight testing completed? Have all
the reports been written and submitted?What’s
left to do?

We are making terrific progress but we are still a
few months away from being done.There
are a lot of ways to slice this up but in general, here is a breakdown of the
various efforts underway to get the IFD540 certified and installed in customer
airplanes:

Hardware
Qualification:

We are still undergoing the official for-credit hardware
qual of the units.This consists of
three sub-categories.We have to conduct
all this testing on the fully assembled and representative units.Accounting for potential snags, I bet we have
8ish weeks ahead of us on this effort.

1.Environmental Qual (DO-160) – this is
progressing well.This part of testing
in which the unit has be to subjected to all kinds of environmental testing to
include extreme heat, and cold, altitude testing, humidity testing, RF
emissions testing, RF susceptibility testing, vibration testing, salt spray,
dust, dot, dot, dot.This testing gets
conducted in a special environmental test lab and the test results get
submitted as part of the FAA approval process.We’ve been in that testing since early December and have a few more
weeks of that effort ahead of us.

2.Complex Electronics Qual (DO-254) – we have conducted
our own not-for-credit testing to ensure we have no problems but have not yet
started the formal qual testing yet.When we do, it should take a few weeks until completion.For the techies in the audience, Complex
Programmable Logic Devices (CPLDs) is where a lot of the embedded logic is
conducted and we just have to show nothing unexpected or nefarious happens in
that hardware/firmware.

3.Minimum Operational Performance Standards (MOPS)
testing – so far so good but not quite done.The FAA specifies minimum performance requirements for hardware (e.g.
GPS, VHF, etc) and each one of those standards comes with pages (and sometimes
pages and pages and pages) of tests that are specified and must be run and
shown to meet published pass/fail criteria.

Software
Qualification:

I think the simplest way to think of this is a two-part
effort – Development and Formal Qualification.Both are governed by an FAA-written software process called DO-178.This is a requirements-based process that involves
all aspects of software development and cert starting with top level product
definition and decomposing that into smaller and smaller and more detailed and
more detailed written requirements, then the software coding to embody those
requirements and then a lot of different kinds of testing designed to validate
all the requirements are correct and fully embodied by the code, and
conversely, the code doesn’t have anything in there that isn’t governed by the
requirements.A related type of testing
is to show that every possible path the code can take results in a known or
deterministic end state.This is
man-years of effort for a product of this size and complexity.It is also an iterative process in that
inputs from flight test and the FAA and sometimes the customer base, can be
cause for rework and then a lot of those steps must be re-performed to
re-validate the changed code.

We don’t run this in a serial manner.In other words, we don’t wait until all the
code is done before we start the validation testing.We are well into the formal qualification of
the code but some parts of the code are still changing as we fly it a lot and
find things that simply must be changed.The closer we get to the cert finish line, the higher the bar is that a
potential code change must clear before we put it in.

This effort is running in parallel with the hardware
qualification.It’s all relative but
flight test is still finding a number of areas that need to, or we want to,
change in order to deliver a truly kick-ass product.

Past experience says it’s wise to be conservative on
estimating the impact of these changes on schedule so I would estimate we have
a few months of work still ahead of us before we declare the code to be 100%
done.

Flight Testing:

Of course I find this to be the most enjoyable part of the effort
by a long shot.We have two dedicated
airplanes for flight test and two other aircraft that we periodically use when
we need to perform special tests or temporarily ramp up flight test intensity.

One thing that has slowed us down over the last 5 weeks is
that one of our test airplanes has been undergoing a major modification in
which a lot of sensors and 3rd party boxes that the IFD540
integrates have been installed.We did
this to ensure we had a truly representative environment for testing in case
our lab configurations couldn’t adequately represent certain flight conditions
or corner conditions.We can also fly
the airplane regularly “in the system” by filing IFR and flying in real
airspace dealing with real flight scenarios day in and day out.We get that airplane back this weekend and
we’ll be back into full intensity flight testing.

One side note, while I would love to show off our stuff and
let people take their own personal evaluation flights in these planes, we have
created a self-imposed “no flights for outside people” rule and we’re staying
disciplined on adhering to it until the system is “done”.Sorry.(I will make periodic posts of pix on my Twitter feed however)

FAA Involvement:

For better or worse, this one has us worried.The crew that we work with in the FAA are
all good guys trying to do a good job.However, I’m sure no one will find it surprising to note that it is a
big organization with lots of disparate parts and heavy workloads, all leading
to a burdensome bureaucratic environment.There are two specific areas that will result in real schedule
uncertainty.The first is that the STC
project has been put into “sequencing”.This is an FAA term that means the level of FAA involvement in the cert
process is large enough that the regional office is not permitted to slip it in
to their normal work flow.Until it is
out of sequencing, no one in the FAA can work the certification approvals and
the big unknown is no one in the FAA can tell when it will pop out of
sequencing, and which regional FAA office will perform the certification
approval tasks. The other event that is
very disruptive to knowing with high confidence when the unit will be
certified/approved is an FAA task called a Multi-Pilot System Useability
Evaluation (MPSUE).This is a FAA-run
evaluation of the system in the lab and in flight in which they conduct a human
factors analysis of the safety and certifiability of the unit.For anyone following the R9 SynVis cert
effort thread, you have some sense of the MPSUE saga that is likely to
unfold.And unlike in the case of SynVis
which was an “abbreviated” MPSUE, the FAA has informed us that the IFD540 will
receive a “full” MPSUE.That is likely
to involve at least 10 FAA flight test pilots and flight test engineers and
human factors folks (and maybe more) and coordinating all those schedules and viewpoints
is a non-trivial task.It is a safe
assumption to say something will need to be changed in the code as a result of
that FAA input and therefore we can’t declare we’re 100% code complete until
the MPSUE has been conducted and any changes implemented.And of course, they can’t even start
scheduling the MPSUE until the project comes out of sequencing.

The rest of the FAA involvement is just par-for-the-course
types of tasks and are in the noise when compared to the above two challenges.

I view this area as the single biggest schedule wild card,
by far.

Launch
Readiness/Pilot Program:

Let’s try to end on a high note.Despite all that work noted above, we are
also running a parallel launch readiness effort so we’re as ready for prime
time as we can be.This has all kinds
of sub-parts to it like ramping up our production line at the factory, having
ship kits all ready to go, having simulators and user documentation ready to go
(we don’t plan to release those until just before certification) and a lot of
other typical product launch types of tasks.

One big part of our plan is to run a “Pilot Program” that
will start the day after we receive TSO and STC approval/certification.This “Pilot Program” is intended to run long
enough (I’d guess 4-10 weeks) for us to be confident there aren’t any must-fix
gotchas before we open the flood gates to full-rate production and
installations.I am planning on
installing TSO/STC units in 20-30 customer aircraft and collecting installation
and flight behavior input as required.I have many more details on the Pilot Program that we’ll share in the coming
next few weeks in which I explain the types of aircraft configurations and
patterns of flying we’re looking for and seeking volunteers to participate in
that program.I wouldn’t call it a “Beta
Test” program since we’ll be fully certified by that time (and by the way, we
have no plans to install pre-certified gear in people’s airplanes) but it will
definitely be in the veins of an early adopter kind of phase.That explanation and solicitation for
volunteers will come in the form of an email to all those customers who have
already signed up for one or more IFD540s but if you want to get a headstart on
throwing your name into that hat, don’t hesitate to send an email to
sjacobson@avidyne.com.

Could sequestration effect the amount of support from the FAA causing this effort to just fall off the FAA's to do list? or do you think this program is big enough in the eyes of the FAA to continue staffing it?

I asked about sequestration and the effects it may be having on the FAA now. As you may recall, the current date for sequestration is 1 March. The official FAA policy right now is 30 days prior to that, changes start happening so we’re already in that window.

As of 1 March, all non mission critical FAA employees are to be furloughed. There seems to be some confusion on what this even means but I believe the current plan of record is that every member of the FAA, at least in the offices that we deal with, may be affected several days per month. I don't understand this to be a full-time furlough. Still ugly but not as ugly as it might have been.

30 days prior, all non mission critical travel is cancelled and employees are encouraged to clear as much work off their to-do lists as feasible.

We surely don't want sequestration to come to pass but it seems like some impacts are already being realized.

We've moved 6 weeks closer to cert since the last big update. I'll use the same way to slice this up as the late Jan update, albeit in an abbreviated manner:

Hardware Qualification:

We are still undergoing the official for-credit hardware qual of the units. We had one glitch with the VHF performance at low voltage testing and have subsequently tweaked the design to address that problem and are back in qual - that put a few week dent in the hardware qual schedule.

1.Environmental Qual (DO-160) – I didn't really mention this in the late Jan update but we front end loaded the tougher and riskier tests so we minimize the likelihood of late-in-the-game surprises. As I noted above, the tests uncovered a design issue that we found and fixed and are back at it now. I'd be willing to bet we have more of those ahead of us this spring.

2.Complex Electronics Qual (DO-254) – we have conducted our own not-for-credit testing to ensure we have no problems but have still not yet started the formal qual testing. When we do, it should take a few weeks until completion. For the techies in the audience, Complex Programmable Logic Devices (CPLDs) is where a lot of the embedded logic is conducted and we just have to show nothing unexpected or nefarious happens in that hardware/firmware.

3.Minimum Operational Performance Standards (MOPS) testing – so far so good still but not quite done. The FAA specifies minimum performance requirements for hardware (e.g. GPS, VHF, etc) and each one of those standards comes with pages (and sometimes pages and pages and pages) of tests that are specified and must be run and shown to meet published pass/fail criteria.

Software Qualification:

We have a very specific punch list of items and we're systematically checking them off one-by-one. The pace is definitely accelerating but there is still a small mountain of work ahead of us. No show stoppers and we've hired up to augment our software testing crew. Many of the formal software tests are written and more are done every day (there are almost one thousand tests to create/review/run/document).

I left this paragraph in from the Jan update since it's still relevant - Past experience says it’s wise to be conservative on estimating the impact of these changes on schedule so I would estimate we have a few months of work still ahead of us before we declare the code to be 100% done.

Flight Testing:

The airplane that I'm principally flying is a workhorse. We upgraded it last week to ops test more of the systems we interface to in a real world situation. The result is that the plane has a crazy antenna farm on the roof and I feel like Lily Tomlin in front of her switchboard as I change connections real-time in flight.

I do have a minor fuel leak in a wing root which will require me to put the plane down for a little bit but aside from that, it's a reliable steed.

The FL-based test aircraft is equally as busy and that gets flown all the time by our Chief Pilot and our CEO. We're bringing another test bird up in FL shortly.

FAA Involvement:

For better or worse, this one still has us worried. We are still in sequencing and it's still not clear how the sequester-generated periodic FAA furloughs will impact the program.

Launch Readiness/Pilot Program:

I had a huge response in the solicitation email to all the pre-buy customers a few weeks back asking for volunteers to participate. I haven't spent enough time pouring through all the data yet to down-select the best configured airplanes operated by eager to help owners. I bet there are still a few weeks before that settles out.

So now
I'm going to put on my program manager hat. What are the estimated completion
dates for the above tasks? In other words, when are you going to be done with
your effort? I know you can't predict the FAA's support, given all the furlough
notices today, but when will your development team be finished?

It's going well (IFD540 development that is). I'm currently on a 6-day XC to exercise the dual IFD540 aircraft "in the system" and will provide a more detailed post when I return. Our rate of closure to the finish line hasn't slipped at all in the last month so that's encouraging.

The FAA, despite the effects of sequester and the fact that the IFD540 cert program is still in sequencing, is pressing ahead with scheduling the MPSUE (Multi-Pilot System Usability Evaluation) human factors evaluation and flight test in May.

Got to turn knobs as well as pinch and poke a 540 at S&F yesterday....Super Impressed. I feel the finish line is in sight and its goning to be well worth the wait. Special thanks to Jonathan Pelletier for showing me some of the functionality.

One more piece of encouraging news - the FAA has officially pulled the program out of sequencing and we had an extensive meeting with them this past Monday with respect to planning the details of the FAA participation in the cert program.

I also happened to bump into one of the principal FAA test pilots who will be part of the MPSUE while on my XC and we got to do some good familiarization training on the real gear in the aircraft on Tuesday.

I'm sure it'll go slower than we all want but it's all coming together nicely.

When I get a few minutes, I'll type up some of the highlights of my 5 day XC trip with the gear. Put about 29 flight hours on the gear during those 5 days.

For planning purposes, you should expect the IFD440 to come out 6 months after the IFD540. But, yes, there is some reason to hope that it will be faster. We already have the hardware and the software is virtually identical to the IFD540 and the FAA is aware of both.

That being said, I'm afraid that it'll be done when it's done and that having an Experimental category airplane won't help speed up delivery for you. Frustrating I'm sure, but it's our reality.

3. We are working toward a week of 20 May FAA Human Factors review - we're ready, just waiting on the FAA to coordinate the schedules of all their participants;

4. Our development team will be done by June or July.

From there, there are too many variables to declare a release date - clarity will be much more likely as #4 approaches. The team here can't be working any harder on this project than we are and we are extremely motivated to get it done as soon as feasible.

Steve, I'm
not sure I share your optimism but it doesn’t matter;it’s going to be what it’s going to be and
its out of our control. I know how its ilmost impossible to predict how long the FAA will take. What I would be
interested in hearing is the feedback from the “pilot program”. Let’s call it a quick
look from a customer’s point of view.Would
that be possible?

Yes, I'll publish results of the Pilot Program but we won't start that until we have a certified product. We anticipate the Pilot Program to run between 3 and 6 weeks after we receive certification.

Victor,

Yes, that would be fantastic to have cert by Oshkosh and while there is some chance of that happening, it does not look likely based on the various back-and-forth tasks that have to be accomplished once the development team is done. I expect that at Oshkosh, assuming we do not have cert, we'll have a much better idea on when it may be (perhaps that's what you were suggesting).

I don't think "the FAA is back from the furloughs". FAA flight controllers are back from furloughs, but it's not clear to me where the money came from. I've seen some reports that it came from other FAA projects like airport improvements. There could still be sequester impacts to non-flight control FAA functions.

Steve's note above indicates to me that first customer deliveries (outside of the pilot program) could be expected in Q4. Anything earlier would be wishful thinking.

Earliest possible certification August plus pilot program brings us to mid-end September. I expect customer deliveries will be in the sequence of pre-order, and not all will be filled on day 1. Avidyne won't likely start mass production until the end of the pilot program to ensure any easy fixes are included in the first shipments.

This serves me right for spending all day flying the IFD540 - come back and there are a bunch of questions posted......

The FAA did indeed stop the furloughing of some employees but that was only the Air Traffic Controllers. The guys who do aircraft and avionics certifications (i.e. the crew we deal with) are still affected by the sequester-induced furloughs. They are forced to take one day every two weeks off without pay. It is having some, but so far not too much impact on what we're seeing.

Yes, we are still flying with the FAA this week for their first look/fam flights. I'm specifically flying with two of the guys on Thursday and they are expecting about a 2 hour (120 min) sortie. We're ready. They have also gotten their evaluation pilots all signed up for the week of 27 May for the official evaluations. They are being very creative in funding that effort - I don't ask questions on how they are pulling that off.....just really happy they are.

The development team does remain on track to complete all development in June or July. We have a very specific punch list of remaining items and it gets smaller every day. Nothing on the remaining list looks like it has any meaningful likelihood or potential to result in a miss of that June/July milestone.

Aside from the May FAA evals, we are still in negotiation with how much of the other cert tasks they will delegate to us. The results of those negotiations will directly affect the duration of the cert end-game.

And yes, as soon as TSO/STC is issued by the FAA, we absolutely still plan to run that pilot program to ensure we don't have (or quickly eliminate) any introduction-to-service types of issues. I still expect the duration to be at least 3-4 weeks long and may be longer depending on the intensity of the flying during the pilot program and if any issues pop up.

Flew the IFD540 with FAA today. I would characterize the flight as going well to very well. This was the first real familiarization the FAA has had with the unit and they did a comprehensive evaluation of the system using our test 182 equipped with dual IFD540s. While all aspects of the system were looked at, the emphasis was on touch screen operations. To be clear, this was not a for-credit evaluation of the system by the FAA, it was just a fam flight and a dry running of the MPSUE profile they will fly later this month. That being said, they did identify two specific areas that likely would produce a cert problem. I think they were right and we will address both issues prior to the official MPSUE later this month.

One other side note - the FAA cert group that we work with were informed that they too are no longer on furloughs as of this week so that should help with keeping the ball rolling on IFD540 cert.

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